thoughts, inspiration, devotions and recipes from my journey in the far north

My Under Appreciated Kitchen Appliance September 11, 2010

I’ve been wanting to make Lentil-Walnut burgers, a recipe I found on Oh She Glows and I was a little discouraged because I don’t have a food processor and buying one is not in the plan for a while. But as I thought about it, I decided to use one of my kitchen appliances that I only bring out for soups and some dry baking goods…that’s right…my humble hand blender.

Can you spot the under appreciated appliance?

So with my brilliant idea in my head, I began to make the lentil-walnut burgers. One item I changed in the recipe found through the link, is the bread crumbs. I don’t eat a lot of bread, in fact I didn’t have any in my cupboard so I decided to use croutons (couldn’t find bread crumbs in my corner grocery store). I blended those down to crumbs with my hand blender–perfect. I took the toasted walnuts and blended them into crumbs too. (For the spices, I used powdered garlic just because I was lazy and I wanted a smooth consistency with all the spices…I think I used at least 1 1/2 tsp of powdered garlic.) Then came the lentils…my hand blender broke down the lentils to a perfect consistency, even leaving a few whole ones for texture. Here’s how they turned out:

Unbaked Lentil-Walnut Burgers

(I will be baking them tonight for my dinner…I actually made 6 burgers. The other 4 are in the freezer to eat at a later date.)

After my test tasting, I can confirm that they do taste really good.

While at the grocery store, I found a can of cooked chickpeas, which are sometimes hard to find in this grocery chain…so I was really excited. I love hummus, and I had all the ingredients at home to make it…yes, I had a lemon, tahini, the olive oil…so it in turn is so much more inexpensive to make your own. I’ve tried making hummus before by hand with a potato masher but it didn’t come out very smooth…well, after using my hand blender for the lentils, I decided to use it to make the hummus…all I can say it’s perfect.

Here’s the result:

Homemade Hummus

Yum! I’m making a salad for lunch and that is definitely going on my salad!!

In case you don’t have a recipe for Hummus, here’s recipe I use:

1 16oz can chickpeas

1/4 c of the liquid from the chickpeas (I forgot and used water)

3-5 T lemon juice

1 1/2 T Tahini (I added more)

1 1/2 tsp garlic powder or 2 cloves garlic, crushed

1/2 tsp salt

2 T olive oil

Drain and rinse the chickpeas (save liquid if you’d like–or use water, but put this liquid aside for a moment). Check over the chickpeas and remove the husks. In a deep mixing bowl, place your hand blender in the bowl with the chickpeas (cover the bowl with a towel-wrapping the towel around the hand blender handle to prevent you spraying yourself and your newly cleaned kitchen with chopped chickpeas). Blend until as smooth as possible and how you prefer it to be. Take out the blender and set aside. Add the rest of the ingredients, and mix with a spoon. Taste. Adjust the seasonings as desired. At this point you can use the blender again to blend all the ingredients and to smooth it out even more. There you have it…homemade hummus. Be sure to put this in an airtight container and refrigerate. Top on a salad, eat with veggies, with crackers and pita chips. Homemade pita chips can be found here.

So, with these fun things completed today…I have to say that I love my under appreciated kitchen appliance…and I’ll never under appreciate it again…now, what more can I make with it?